HANDS OFF CAIN

“THE SMILING FACE OF THE MULLAHS”

Report on the Death Penalty in Iran

Presentation of HOC’s Report

FRIDAY,22 JANUARY 2016 – 15.30 P.M.

Via di Torre Argentina 76

Rome

Ph. 06/68803848 – 335 8000577 – 324 9239338 – Fax 06/68979211

Contents

PRESS RELEASE 3

  • Reminder for the Italian Authorities 4
  • At least 2.277 Executions under Rouhani’s Presidency4
  • Hanging – But Not Only... 5
  • Stoning 6
  • Blood Money 7
  • Death Penalty for Blasphemy and Apostasy 7
  • Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders 8
  • The “War on Drugs” 9
  • The “War on Terror”10
  • Persecution of Adherents to Religious and Spiritual Movements11
  • Top Secret Death11

APPEAL13

PRESS CONFERENCE

Presentation of

Hands Off Cain’s Report on the Death Penalty in Iran

“THE SMILING FACE OF THE MULLAHS”

FRIDAY, 22 JANUARY 2016 – 15.30 P.M.

Via di Torre Argentina 76

Rome

With the participation of:

Marco Pannella

Sergio D’Elia, Secretary of Hands off Cain

Giulio Maria Terzi di Sant’Agata, former Minister of Foreign Attairs

Elisabetta Zamparutti, Treasurer of Hands off Cain

Domenico Letizia,Board of Hands off Cain

In view of the visit to Italy by President Hassan Rouhani, scheduled for the 25th and 26th of January,Hands Off Cain presents the Report on the Death Penalty in Iran entitled “The Smiling Face of the Mullahs”.

The Report lists the executions carried out in Iran in 2015 and in first two weeks of 2016 and provides a comprehensive view of capital punishment under Rouhani's Presidency.

The report also represents a “reminder” for the Italian State's highest authorities to bring the question of the death penalty and the respect of human rights to the center of every meeting and understanding with the representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

During the press conference, the initiatives of @MovingRights4Iranwith #DiteloaRouhani will be discussed and promoted, as well as those of Hands Off Cain and Equality Italia, the Radical Party, Associazione Luca Coscioni, A Buon Diritto, Arci, ArciGay, Radicali Italiani, Certi Diritti, ArciLesbica, Coalizione Italiana Libertà e Diritti Civili, Eraonlus, Non c’è Pace senza Giustizia, Lega Italiana dei Diritti Umani, Hope, GaiaItalia.com, Comitato Helsinki, We are What We Do.

Info: +39-06-68803848 – 335 8000577 – 324 9239338

Hands Off Cain, The Death Penalty in Iran, January 20161

Reminder for the Italian Authorities

The election of Hassan Rouhani in June of 2013 was greeted by everyone (almost) as a turnabout and, from that time, the new President of the Islamic Republic was defined as the “reformer”, the “moderate”, the “happy and smiling face” of the Mullah’s regime.

This Report by Hands Off Cain speaks of a different reality, in which the hanging of ethnic and religious minorities and of political opposition for non-violent crimes or those of an essentially political nature, have continued in the in the Islamic Republic led by Hassan Rouhani.

These executions are the latest chapter in a story that began in the summer of 1988 when, following a fatwa issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, more than 30,000 political prisoners, the overwhelming majority of them activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), were hanged for being “enemies of Allah”. While many organizations for the defence of human rights have called it a crime against humanity, many of those responsible for the massacre are now part of the leadership of the regime, including Mostafa Poor Mohammadi and Seyed Ebrahim Reisi – two of the five members of the “Amnesty Commission” that Khomeini had assigned for prisons and that proved to be a “Death Commission” – who have become today, respectively, Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General of the Islamic Republic.

The alarming use of the death penalty, applied to minors in open violation of international accords and conventions ratified by Iran, the discrimination against religious minorities, particularly the Baha’i and Christians, the legal discrimination against women and the persecution of sexual minorities, the destruction of the State of Israel and the negation of the Holocaust, promoted, above all, by the Supreme Guide Khamenei continue to define the Mullah’s Regime regardless of the so-called “moderate” and “smiling” Presidency of Rouhani.

In the name of peace and international security – against the threat of nuclear war and terrorism – Iran regards itself as a “stabilizing force” in the Middle East and beyond, entrusted to an emergency government that created the emergency itself while undermining peace and international security. It would be reasonable that the primary source of the problem become its primary solution. Yet, the most grievous matter here is how a regime has received international legitimacy while internally conducting an ongoing war and daily reign of terror and insecurity against its own people.

What described above should be a reminder for the Italian authorities, who on 25 and 26 January will receive President Hassan Rouhani who chose Rome as the first European capital to visit, identifying Italy as the “front door” towards the West.

We urge the highest representatives of Italy, a country recognized in the world as the champion of the international struggle to promote a universal moratorium on executions, and for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, to put the issue of the death penalty, and more generally of the respect of human rights at the center of every meeting and agreement with representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, starting from those with President Rouhani.

At least 2.277 Executions under Rouhani’s Presidency

The election of Hassan Rouhani as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran on 14 June 2013, has led many observers, some human rights defenders and the international community, to be optimistic. However, the new Government has not changed its approach regarding the application of the death penalty, and indeed, the rate of executions has risen sharply since the summer of 2013. Since the beginning of Rouhani’s presidency, as of 15 January 2016, at least 2,277 people have been executed in Iran.

In 2015 the Islamic Republic carried out at least 980 executions, a 22.5% increase compared to 800 in 2014 and a 42.6% increase compared to 687 in 2013. This is the number of executions among the highest in the recent history of Iran, which classifies it as the top “Executioner-Country” inthe world in relation to population.At least 370 execution cases (37.7%) were reported by official Iranian sources (websites of the Iranian Judiciary, national Iranian broadcasting network, and official or state-run news agencies and newspapers); 610 cases (62.3%) included in the annual numbers were reported by unofficial sources (other human rights NGOs or sources inside Iran). The actual number of executions is probably much higher than the figures included in the Report of Hands Off Cain.

A majority of those who were executed were convicted of drug-related offences (632 cases, 178 of them reported by official Iranian sources), followed by murder (201 cases, including 122 announced by official sources), rape (56 cases, of which 50 announced by official media), political offences (16 cases, including 5 officially reported), and Moharebeh (waging war against God), armed robbery and “corruption on earth” (22 cases, including 15 officially reported). In at least 53 other cases, the crimes for which the convicts were found guilty remained unspecified.

At least 53 people were executed in the first two weeks of 2016.

Hanging is the preferred method with which to apply Sharia law, but in April 2013 Iran reinserted execution by stoning for those convicted of adultery into a previous version of the new Penal Code that had omitted it.

Public executions by hanging continued into 2015, when at least58 people were hanged in public.

In 2015, executions of women have slightly decreased: there were at least15, including a juvenile offender ((8 for drug-related crimes, 2 for murder and 5 for unspecified crimes), but only 2 were announced by Iranian authorities. In 2014, Iran had hanged at least 36 women.

Executions of child offenders continued into 2015, in open violation of two international treaties to which it is party, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). At least6 juvenile offenders were hanged in 2015, including one woman (5 for murder cases, including 3 reported by official sources; and 1 for rape, reported by official sources). Another possible minor offender was executed 2016, as of 20 January.

On 17 December 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a new resolution strongly condemning the brutal and systematic violation of human rights in Iran, in particular the mass and arbitrary executions, increasing violence and discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities. The resolution expresses “serious concern at the alarming high frequency of, and increase in the carrying-out of the death penalty, in disregard of internationally recognized safeguards, ... and at the continuing imposition and carrying-out of the death penalty against minors and persons who at the time of their offence were under the age of 18” and calls on the Iranian regime “to abolish, in law and in practice, public executions… and executions carried out in violation of its international obligations” and “to ensure, in law and in practice, that no one is subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The resolution expresses serious concerns about “all forms of discrimination and other human rights violations against women and girls, violence against persons belonging to recognized and unrecognized religious minorities” and calls for the elimination “in law and in practice” of “all forms of discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to ethnic, linguistic or other minorities.” The resolution also calls upon the regime “to end widespread and serious restrictions… on the right to freedom of expression, opinion, association and peaceful assembly” and “to release persons arbitrarily detained.”

Hanging – but not only...

Hanging is often carried out by crane or low platforms to draw out the pain of death. The noose is made from heavy rope or steel wire and is placed around the neck in such a fashion as to crush the larynx causing extreme pain and prolonging the death of the condemned. Hanging is often carried out in public and combined with supplementary punishments such as flogging and the amputation of limbs before the actual execution.

In July 2011, the Japanese crane company Tadano announced that it had ended contracts with the Iranian Government, after United Against Nuclear Iran launched a Cranes Campaign, publishing on its website a list of eight international companies that send crane resources to Iran, with photos of the cranes being used as execution devices. In August 2011, another Japanese crane manufacturer, UNIC, announced the end of its business in Iran, joining Tadano and Terex in pulling out of Iran following UANI’s Cranes Campaign.

In January 2008, then-judicial chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi decided that public executions, in the future, would be carried out, “only with his approval and based on social necessities.” In fact, public executions decreased in 2008, when there were no less than 30 public hangings, of which 16 took place after Shahroudi’s decree, while no less than 12 people were hanged in public places in 2009, compared to at least 110 people who were publicly executed in 2007. However, since the 2009 post-election protests in Iran, the number of executions, particularly public executions, has risen dramatically.

Executions carried out in public must be added to those more numerous executions, often shrouded in secrecy, carried out in prisons. Most of them were carried out for drug-related offenses.

However, the death penalty is not the only punishment dictated by the Iranian implementation of Sharia. There is also torture, amputation, flogging and other cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments. These are not isolated incidents and they occur in flagrant violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that Iran signed and which expressly prohibits such practices. Every year, thousands of youths are whipped for consuming alcohol or attending parties with the opposite sex or for outrages against public decency. Authorities consider whipping an appropriate punishment to combat immorality, and such punishments are publicly inflicted as a “lesson to those who watch.”

On 2 March 2015, a man who was not identified by name was blinded in the left eye in the Rajaee Shahr prison of Karaj as part of “an eye for an eye” punishment for an acid attack, Hamshahri newspaper reported. It is not known whether the blinding was conducted by the medical staff or by the offended. The prisoner was convicted of pouring acid on the face of another man, leading to blindness in both eyes. He was sentenced to: blindness in eyes, payment of “Diyeh” (blood money) and 10 years in prison. Blindness of the right eye was postponed according to the report.

Between 3 and 4 August 2015, two inmates, identified as Rahman K. and Mehdi R., had their right hand and left foot severed by the authorities in a prison in Mashhad. They were accused of committing a bank heist and convicted of Moharebeh. On 28 June, the fundamentalist regime amputated the fingers of two prisoners in the same prison in Mashhad. In May 2015, a high ranking Iranian cleric, who is the representative of the regime’s Supreme Leader in Hormozgan province, had called for more inhumane punishments of hand amputations to be carried out. While visiting Mashhad, Ghulam-Ali Naeem Abadi said: “If the hands of a few of those who commit theft in society are cut off, they would serve as examples for others.” “Security would be restored in society by amputating a few fingers; why then are such punishments not being fully implemented?” he asked.

On 2 November 2015, IRNA state news agency reported that the Iranian regime had ratified an amendment to the misogynic bill dubbed “Protecting sanctity of hijab and morality”. According to this amendment, all women employees have to wear a uniform dress determined by the regime. According to Iranian regime officials, this bill will not only cover governmental agencies but will include private companies and institutions, kindergartens, parks and recreational sites, and businesses. The bill also specifies fines, detention and slashing wages of women employees on the pretext of “mal-veiling”. According to this bill, “women’s occupation in businesses… should observe segregation from men and working hours of 7 am to 10 pm. Failing to observe this article will be considered a violation and the business that has violated the law will be closed down for one week by the security forces and if repeated will be closed for a month.” According to another article of this bill that was adopted in mid August by regime’s parliament, women drivers who fail to observe the medieval laws of hijab imposed by the regime will face heavy fines and their driver’s licenses will be revoked. Moreover, “the driver is responsible for whatever goes on in the car and thus drivers are accountable for the way their passengers are dressed”. As such, even the driver of the vehicle should pay a fine for the “mal-veiling” of the passengers.

Stoning

In April 2013, the Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 religious jurists empowered to vet all legislation to ensure its compatibility with Iran’s Constitution and Sharia, reinserted the stoning provision into a previous version of the new Penal Code, which had omitted stoning to death as the explicit penalty for adultery. The draft Penal Code, as amended by the Guardian Council, explicitly identifies stoning as a form of punishment for people convicted of adultery or sex outside of marriage. Under Article 132, paragraph 3, a man or a woman can be stoned to death for multiple extramarital affairs. In addition, under article 225, if a court and the head of the judiciary rule that it is “not possible” in a particular case to carry out the stoning, the person may be executed by another method if the authorities proved the crime on the basis of the eyewitness testimony or the defendant’s confession. The revised code also provides that courts that convict defendants of adultery based on the “knowledge of the judge,” a notoriously vague and subjective doctrine allowing conviction in the absence of any hard evidence, may impose corporal punishment sentences of 100 lashes rather than execution by stoning. The penalty for people convicted of fornication, or sex outside of marriage that involves an unmarried person, is 100 lashes.

Iran had the world’s highest rate of execution by stoning, but no one knows with certainty how many people have been stoned in Iran. According to a list compiled by the Human Rights Commission of the National Council of the Iranian Resistance, at least 150 people have been stoned in Iran since 1980. The reported numbers are probably lower than the actual numbers, because most of the condemnations to stoning issued by the Iranian authorities are handed down secretly, as well as for the fact that so little information is actually available from many prisons in Iran. Shadi Sadr, who has represented five people sentenced to stoning, said Iran carried out stoning in secret in prisons, in the desert or very early in the morning in cemeteries.